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Wheeling Jesuit alum raises the NASA issue

A Wheeling Jesuit U. alum has posted an open letter to the Towson MD-based Maryland provincial, Rev. James Shea, SJ, complaining about “the myopic arrogance of the oligarchy temporarily occupying the president’s office and permanently occupying the dual boards” of the university.

Their arrogance “has caused these scandals to explode throughout the blogosphere, newspapers, television, and talk-radio,” says Michael J. Fahy. “WJU’s public image created by the current regime, on a scale of 1 to 10, has been zero.”

He apparently wants to say that the firing was timed to follow the NASA report, rather than the other way around, though his letter is

murky on the point — in which case the Sept. 8 Inside Higher Ed piece makes or implies the same point.

[I]f the trustees who ousted Father Gulietti [sic] were upset about the NASA report, their selection of McAteer as acting president is puzzling. As university vice president, McAteer had oversight of the NASA projects, according to board members.

An audit by NASA’s inspector general has found that the U.S. space agency “inappropriately approved, obligated, and partially expended” more than $4-million in costs incurred at Wheeling Jesuit University, in West Virginia. As a result of the audit, the agency has agreed to renegotiate the rates it pays Wheeling Jesuit to run a center for encouraging the transfer of technologies between NASA and private industry.